Former vice-president Atiku Abubakar has won the presidential primary election of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The returning officer of the ADC presidential primary election, Tunde Ogbeha, announced Abubakar as the winner of the primary poll on Wednesday night.
Abubakar polled 1,846,370 votes to defeat two other contenders — former managing director of the defunct FSB International Bank, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, and former governor of Rivers and ex-minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi.
Amaechi secured 504,117 votes while Hayatu-Deen got 177,120 votes.
Speaking after he was presented with the ADC flag as the party’s standard-bearer for the 2027 elections, Abubakar asked Hayatu-Deen and Amaechi to “close ranks and join him in the fight to rescue Nigeria’s democracy”.
He added that there is no winner and no vanquished in the contest.
David Mark, ADC national chairman, said the contest was “free, fair, credible and worthy of democratic standards”.
He said he came under “intense pressure to tilt the direction” of the presidential primary.
“We did not work towards a predetermined outcome,” he said.
Recall that Amaechi and Hayatu-Deen had earlier rejected the results over alleged irregularities and voter disenfranchisement, raising controversy around the primary election.
With his emergence, Abubakar will be facing President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2027 presidential election.